Evan Rachel Wood is an American actress. Born September 7th, 1987 in Raleigh, North Carolina, her first starring role was in 2002's Little Secrets. She was simultaneously starring in the TV series Once and Again, but her breakthrough role was her critically acclaimed performance in teen drama film Thirteen (2003) for which she received a Golden Globe nomination. She is known for mostly appearing in independent films and has acted in Pretty Persuasion, Down In The Valley, Running With Scissors, Barefoot, Across the Universe (2007), Into the Forest, Kajillionaire and voice-acted in Strange Magic and Frozen II. She is now probably best known for her role as Queen Sophie Anne on True Blood and her current starring role in Westworld.
She is the former fiance of Marilyn Manson and married Jamie Bell (then separated from him less than two years later). They have one son. She is openly bisexual and an advocate of LGBT and women's rights. She has become friends with Millie Bobby Brown of all people. She also made a hilarious F-bomb review
of the now infamous movie Cats. She has said she's been a victim of domestic abuse (publicly naming Marilyn Manson as her abuser in 2021) and publicly testified in favor of a California law which gave greater resources to prosecute such cases.
Her credits include:
- American Gothic (1995-96) as Rose Russell
- Practical Magic (1998) as Kylie Owens
- Profiler (1998-99) as Chloe Waters
- Once and Again (1999-2002) as Jessie Sammler
- Touched by an Angel (2000) as Sarah Radcliff
- The West Wing (2002) as Hogan Cregg
- S1m0ne (2002) as Lainey Christian Taransky
- CSI (2003) as Nora Easton
- Thirteen (2003) as Tracy Freeland
- The Missing (2003) as Lilly Gilkeson
- Pretty Persuasion (2005) as Kimberly Joyce
- Asterix and the Vikings (2006) as Abba (voice; English dub)
- Battle for Terra (2007) as Mala (voice)
- Across the Universe (2007) (2007) as Lucy Carrigan
- The Wrestler (2008) as Stephanie Ramzinski
- Whatever Works (2009) as Melody Celestine
- True Blood (2009-11) as Queen Sophie-Anne Leclerq
- The Conspirator (2010) as Anna Surratt
- Mildred Pierce (2011) as Veda Pierce
- The Ides of March (2011) as Molly Stearns
- Robot Chicken (2013) as Girl, Mother (voice)
- Barefoot (2014) as Daisy Kensington
- Strange Magic (2015) as Marianne (voice)
- Into the Forest (2015) as Eva
- Westworld (2016-2022) as Dolores Abernathy
- Drunk History (2018-19) as Deborah Sampson, Mary Shelley
- Flavors of Youth (2018) as Yi Lin (voice; English dub)
- What We Do in the Shadows (2019) (2019) as Evan the Immortal Princess of the Undead
- Frozen II (2019) as Queen Iduna (voice)
- Kajillionaire (2020) as Old Dolio Dyne
- Weird: The Al Yankovic Story (2022) as Madonna
Tropes featured in her work include:
- Celebrity Resemblance: To Rachel Brosnahan and Alexandra Breckenridge, with the resemblance to the former becoming something of an Ascended Meme, as they both can attest.
- Everyone Loves Blondes: Most of her filmography.
- Evil Redhead: In True Blood and Mildred Pierce.
- Meta Casting: Having played lots of Damsel in Distress characters, it's very appropriate that she stars in Westworld as Dolores - a robot who is programmed to be a damsel, but becomes an Action Girl. Evan even said it felt like she were fighting her base instincts when playing Dolores.
- Non-Singing Voice: In the HBO adaptation of Mildred Pierce, but averted in Across the Universe (2007). Inverted with Frozen II, where she was brought on board primarily to bring a singing voice to a character who barely spoke in the previous film.
- Queer Character, Queer Actor: She's played lesbians in Kajillionaire and Allure. Her character's father suspects she may be a lesbian in The Wrestler too.
- Reality Subtext:
- Randy of The Wrestler suspects his daughter might be a lesbian. Evan is bisexual in real life.
- Evan claims that her character in Across the Universe (2007) is quite close to her real personality.
- The Alice Allusions with her character Dolores in Westworld. She's a huge fan of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.
"And since I was little, people always nicknamed me Alice, even total strangers. I do know I'm always in Wonderland. And I'm definitely just as curious. I don't mind being amongst the mad people, I enjoy it."- A disturbing example: Wood is a survivor of abuse and more than likely drew from her real-life trauma when she played an abuser in Allure.
- Throw It In!: Thirteen (2003):
- Tracy says, "What the fuck did you do?" when Evie pierces her belly button. This is because Nikki Reed had actually poked the top of Evan's belly with her needle.
- In the same film she and Nikki Reed supplied most of their own clothes for their characters, and began dressing more alike as filming went on without realizing.
- Unwillingly Girly Tomboy: In Showbiz Kids she says that she hated having to dress up for publicity as a kid because she was a tomboy.
- What Could Have Been:
- She came very close to getting the role of Claudia in Interview with the Vampire, that ended up becoming Kirsten Dunst's breakout role.
- She was cast as the lead in Raise Your Voice but due to production changes was replaced with Hilary Duff.
- She also had to drop out of Sucker Punch due to conflicts with True Blood.
- She was the original choice for Mary Jane in Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark, alongside Alan Cumming. They both jumped ship once it started to become clear what a massive Troubled Production the show would turn into.
